


Hidden Away

by Haberdasher



Series: Statement Fics [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: College, Gen, Hide and Seek, Hiding, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Loneliness, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), POV Original Character, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27054778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: Statement of Riley Parker regarding a hide-and-seek game played on their college’s campus.
Series: Statement Fics [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026159
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	Hidden Away

Statement of Riley Parker regarding a hide-and-seek game played on their college’s campus. Original statement given April 13th, 2019. Recording by Artemis Lee, archival assistant for the Usher Foundation.

Statement begins.

I think it’s important to start off by saying that this was a Saturday night, midterms had just ended, and most of us were drunk. I think that explains a lot of what we were thinking here. I know hide-and-seek is seen as a kid’s game, but when you’re hanging on campus with your friends, you’re bored, and you just want to let off some steam after a week of grueling exams... sometimes you get creative.

 _I_ wasn’t drunk, though. I don’t drink, never have. Alcoholism runs in my family, and I figured the best way to avoid it is to just not drink in the first place. Not that it’s really anyone’s business why I don’t drink, but when people get snotty about it, explaining that usually makes them back off a bit.

Crystal, though--Crystal Wheeler is her full name--she’s the one who suggested it, and she was drunk as a skunk at the time. Luis Vasquez was the one who suggested Old Bailey as the playing ground--he was drunk too--and it wasn’t long before we all went over there and started figuring out the rules.

There were eight of us playing--myself, Crystal, Luis, AJ, Bowie, Ben, Nessie, and Red; I could give you last names for everybody, but I really doubt they’d be of much help. The rules were simple: find a spot in Old Bailey and hide in it, wait for the seeker to find you, first one found is the seeker next if there’s time to play again, last one found gets bragging rights, leaving Old Bailey means you’re kicked from the game for good.

Old Bailey isn’t called that because there’s another Bailey to confuse it with, but because it’s _really_ old--like, early 1800s old, oldest building on campus by far. It gets whatever classes or activities can’t fit somewhere else, pretty much, but for such a big building in the middle of campus, it’s really not used that often. And most importantly for our game, it’s got a lot of little nooks and crannies hidden away in it.

Ben volunteered to be the first seeker, and he gave us a full minute to go find our hiding spots since we needed time to be able to get there, and maybe even to figure out where it was we wanted to hide.

I knew where I was going the instant I started running, though. There’s a little room on the far end of the building from where Ben was counting that the choir uses for practice sometimes--I’m not in choir myself, but I found out about it when I helped them carry equipment in one time. The door to it’s kind of hidden away off to the side of a lecture hall, so unless you know it’s there, you’d probably pass by it and not even notice.

Once I got in the room, I noticed a wardrobe in the corner of the room, and when I opened it it turned out to be empty, so I had no doubt I’d be able to fit in it easily, if not comfortably. I climbed inside, got as comfortable as I could, and looked down at my glow-in-the-dark watch, which was already ticking away.

Tick. Tick. Tick. 12:01 AM. One minute passed. The seeker could stop counting and start looking.

I wasn’t worried about being the first one found. Even if Ben knew about this spot, it was on the wrong end of the building for that. I figured I had several minutes at least to hang in there, watch the clock, peer out through the slits in the doors to see if anyone was coming.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Thirty minutes passed.

Ben’d probably be getting close now, I figured--though I didn’t hear him, so maybe not, maybe I had a bit longer to wait. We’d never done this before, so it’s not like I had any real idea of how long it’d take. And like I said, it was a _big_ building.

I started to wish I’d brought my phone with, but then, knowing my luck, it’d probably make some noise and give my spot away at exactly the wrong time. As it was, my watch seemed loud enough, though maybe that was just because there wasn’t anything else to make noise in there.

Tick. Tick. Tick. One hour passed.

I was getting a little achy--the wardrobe had enough room for me but not much to spare, so I was just standing inside it in kind of an awkward position, without much room to fidget around in there.

I had to be one of the last ones left, right? Maybe I’d even be the winner.

I could put up with a few aches and pains for a bit longer if it meant getting to lord it over my friends for ages to come.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Hour and a half passed.

This was getting ridiculous. My nose itched, and I had to pee, and I was bored as hell, and I hadn’t heard one single person come by this entire time.

Had they forgotten about me?

No, of course not. We were friends. They probably just overlooked the door to the room altogether. It was easy enough to do, after all.

...when I won the game, I was making them buy me food afterwards.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Two hours passed.

I kept coming back to the thought that my friends had forgotten about me, forgotten about the game entirely, forgotten that I was still hidden away in my little nook in Old Bailey. I didn’t want to believe it, but what else was there? Could two hours of searching really not be enough to find this room? I still hadn’t heard so much as a single footstep.

Then I started to wonder what would happen if that was the case. How long would it take for people to notice I was missing? Would somebody come use the room before then?

It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t checked whether I could get out of the wardrobe before stepping inside. What if I was trapped in there? What if it was locked? I could still see the room outside through those slits in the door, but I think I started hyperventilating a bit, because the air didn’t feel right in my lungs, and I wondered if the slits weren’t big enough, if I was going to suffocate to death in there and nobody would ever know-

It was exactly 2:36:13 according to my watch when I opened the wardrobe from the inside, taking a deep breath as I stepped out into the room beyond; the air wasn’t exactly fresh in there, but it was damn well better than inside the wardrobe, anyway.

I still didn’t hear a sound beyond the tick of my watch and my own breathing and heartbeat, but just getting out was enough to calm me down a little, convince me that I wasn’t going to die forgotten in an old choir wardrobe. Still, it took a few minutes before I got my bearings enough to start wandering around.

The part of me that just figured I was really good at hide-and-seek finally shut up for good when I opened the door to the choir room and entered the giant lecture hall it was connected to and still heard nothing. There was no way that seven mostly-drunk college kids searching for someone in an echo-y old building wouldn’t be making some kind of noise, but I couldn’t hear a thing. Not from people, anyway; I focused enough that I heard the hum of the electric lights, noticed a few gurgles from the plumbing system when I got a drink of water and stopped in the bathroom, but nothing that came from other people. I even looked down at the carpet to see if I could make out any footprints, but no such luck.

I walked... well, really it was more of a jog, to the other side of the building, where we’d all left our bags and phones and stuff just before the game started, but the only stuff there was mine. My phone wouldn’t turn on, even though I thought it’d still had 70% battery when we started, but at that point I wasn’t even surprised. I did, however, have a couple hard candies still buried in my bag--I tend to keep some kind of candy around just in case, especially since Nessie lives two doors down and she’s diabetic--and I ate one, thanking my past self for being so considerate.

The tiredness set in all at once, it seemed like. I’d chugged an energy drink while most of my friends were chugging alcoholic drinks, so it might’ve just been that wearing off, but suddenly I didn’t want to bother dragging myself back to my dorm and plugging in my phone and doing everything else I’d need to do before going to bed, I just wanted sleep, _now_. I saw some sort of a teacher’s lounge with a couch in it, and fuck, it wasn’t even an especially nice couch, just a beat-up old yellow thing that was lumpy as hell, but at that point it might as well have been sent by the gods as far as I was concerned.

I don’t remember the exact time, but I know it was a little after 3 according to my watch before I managed to get some sleep in.

When I checked my watch upon waking up, it was 9:47, the sun was shining, and I still didn’t hear a peep. Which didn’t surprise me that much, really--obviously my friends had ditched me, and I’d give them hell for it later.

But then I passed by a window. It was a beautiful day out, the sun was shining, the trees were swaying gently in the wind... and there was nobody outside.

Nobody rushing to or from the cafeteria. Nobody heading to or from their car. Nobody walking their dog, or feeding the feral cats on campus, or playing ultimate frisbee, or any of the usual things people would do on a nice Sunday morning. I didn’t even see any squirrels scampering about, and those things are usually _all_ over campus.

My mind went to... some weird places there. Wondering if I’d missed the apocalypse or something. Maybe the Rapture. Not that I’m religious, but hell, what else was there?

I had the rest of my hard candies at that point, though that wasn’t quite enough to fill my stomach on its own. Just needed something to get my mind off things, I think, some kind of distraction.

I looked back at the lounge where I’d slept, figuring I’d make a note of it for later, maybe even thank the professor who took care of the spot for putting the couch there... I remember it was room 165, but there was no name on the door. Not a plaque, not a carving, not even a piece of paper saying the professor’s name.

There was a desk next to the couch, and I looked at the papers on it, not because it really mattered who this professor was in the greater scheme of things but because I just wanted to _know_ , but all the papers were blank. Just ordinary white printer paper, stacked haphazardly on a desk to look like a normal professor’s workspace if you didn’t look too closely.

Not going to lie... I think I had a bit of a panic attack when I saw that. It just didn’t make sense, even with my half-formed theories about the apocalypse or the Rapture or whatnot. It wasn’t that everybody had vanished--it was more like nobody had ever been there to begin with, or that every sign of their existence had vanished with them except the building of Old Bailey itself. There was just me and my bag and that was it. Me against the world.

I really wish I’d brought my charger with me that night.

Then I figured, well, lights had worked fine the night before--and I flipped one on now, confirmed they were still working--so I might as well make my way back to my dorm room, charge my phone, get out my laptop, figure out what the hell it was I’d clearly missed. Leaving Old Bailey was still technically losing the game of hide-and-seek that I’d rightfully won, I guess, but that had long since stopped mattering to me. If I couldn’t have my friends with me, I at least wanted to know what happened to them.

According to my watch, it was 10:18 when I finally stepped outside Old Bailey.

The instant I stepped outside I heard a loud noise and I flinched, panicked a bit, covered my ears. It took me a minute to realize what the noise was.

It was my friends, all seven of them, standing outside the main door to Old Bailey, shouting my name. There was a police officer there, too; apparently they’d called him when I vanished, thought I might have gotten stuck somewhere. Guess they weren’t entirely wrong.

It was dark out, though. And according to all of their phones and watches and whatnot, it was only 2:36 in the morning, though my watch still showed that it was well after 10 AM.

The next time I went back in that building--with Red in tow, because I was _not_ going back alone--I checked on what I remembered from my time in there. Not only could I not find the couch, I couldn’t find room 165; the numbers only go up to 149 before skipping to the 200s, apparently. The wardrobe was gone, too, and when I asked some choir kids about it, none of them remembered it being there.

There’s no big moral to this story, I don’t think, no way to tie it all up in a knot. I’ve always had a bit of an issue with anxiety, and that’s even worse now, as you might imagine. If I’ve learned anything, it’s just that the world is even weirder and scarier than I had imagined, and I could do without that knowledge, thanks. All I know is I’m never going back to Old Bailey alone, and I’m never playing another game of hide-and-seek in my life.

Statement ends.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, consider following me on tumblr at [haberdashing](https://haberdashing.tumblr.com/)!


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